Rutgers Predicts Record Ragweed Season

By RUTGERS SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

August 23, 2017 at 11:13 AM

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EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ - Ragweed season has begun in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area with the sighting of the first grain of pollen on August 17 by Leonard Bielory, M.D., National Allergy Bureau-certified pollen counting station and a specialist in allergy and immunology with the Rutgers Center of Environmental Prediction at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

The major release started on Aug. 20 and will continue for the next 48 hours. “While this has been the latest onset we have seen over the past five years, the peak will be quite high in the coming weeks due to the heavy rain precipitation we have had over the summer,” said Bielory.
The effect of weather patterns have a strong impact on pollination, leading to “three out of four Americans who have allergies being allergic to ragweed pollen,” he explains.

Ragweed pollination is expected to continue until the first frost, so not good news for allergy sufferers.
The monitoring of the pollen count that Bielory performs on a daily basis appears to be consistent with his research that climate change weather patterns affecting pollen release. He and researchers at Rutgers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been part of an ongoing study, funded in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A changing climate means allergy-causing ragweed pollen has a longer season that extends further north than it did just 16 years ago and in New Jersey appears to be increasing in duration of exposure. According to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bielory and other allergy experts found that ragweed pollen season lasted as much as 27 days longer in 2009 than it did in 1995, with increasing range northward resulting in a more dramatic the change in the length of pollen season. Allergies associated with ragweed pollen—3 out of 4 Americans who are allergic have ragweed allergies, also known as hay fever— costs about $21 billion a year in the U.S.

This was once a hypothesis and modeled as a possibility, “but it is a reality,” said Bielory, who was the principal investigator of the EPA grant. “This is affecting patients now.”
Ragweed is not the only pollen season affected, said Bielory, as the study has shown the impact on tree and grass pollen seasons that occur in the early and late spring. An examination of other species and other regions of the continental United States is ongoing.

As global average temperatures have warmed, the first frost has been delayed, especially at higher latitudes, which has meant a longer season for ragweed. “Because warming is greater at these high latitudes, the length of the season has been more pronounced.”

In New Jersey, the season appears to have increased over the past 20 years. Hot and dry weather in source areas aid the release of ragweed pollen during the flowering season and result in the deep distribution needed to lift the pollen over the greater dispersion.

"Allergies that have been minor in the past are going to increase and become more of a clinical problem that may also impact patients with asthma.”
Email info@nynjpollen.com for more information. For actual pollen counts, visit www.nynjpollencount.com.

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